Dallas ISD human resources chief Carmen Darville told her staff late Thursday afternoon that she still supports hiring one of her top assistants, Tonya Sadler Grayson, despite her not disclosing her criminal history on her job application.

The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday that a top Dallas ISD investigator was investigating whether Grayson lied on her district job application by saying she had no criminal record. That investigator, Jeremy Liebbe, was placed on paid leave shortly after his investigation started. Grayson is Liebbe’s boss.

On Grayson’s job application, she selected “no” on three separate questions about a possible criminal history. Online records show she served 12 months probation in 1990 for misdemeanor criminal trespassing in Georgia, when she was 19 years old.

Grayson, who makes $140,000 annually, issued a statement Thursday explaining her answers on the application.

“When I read the questions on the application, I believed that my situation did not apply,” Grayson said in an email sent to the News. “This had never come up during any previous applications for positions at other places of employment. Upon notification, ​I fully disclosed the misdemeanor from when I was 19 years old to the district prior to my employment.”

Darville, who is Grayson’s boss, sent an email to human resources employees late Thursday afternoon defending her decision to hire Grayson.

The 15-member commission tasked with drafting a home-rule charter for Dallas ISD will meet for the first time Monday.

It will kick off a potential year-long effort for the commissioners to rewrite how DISD operates, spends its money and the way it is governed. But before it tackles those fundamental questions, the commission will spend its first gathering discussing its own administrative issues.

And the commissioners have a lot of work to do.

The 15 members will take their oath of office, elect commission officers, review the 2,000-page Texas Education Code and receive training on the Open Meetings Act and Public Information Act. The commission will be set up and act like a governmental body, such as the Dallas ISD school board, with meetings open to the public.

The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. on July 7 at the Dallas ISD administration building at 3700 Ross Ave.

The commission is the culmination of an effort by Support Our Public Schools to transform Dallas ISD into the Texas’ first home-rule charter district. The group launched its effort in March with a petition, which it submitted to DISD trustees in May with 48,000 signatures. It compelled the school board to appoint the commissioners.

A 1995 Texas law allows school districts to overhaul into home rules, which would be exempt from some state laws and free to install a new system of governing. Some potential changes: The school year before the last Monday of August, as the state mandates. Class-size ratio limits could be ignored in some elementary schools.

Monday’s meeting will bring together 15 people with disparate backgrounds and views. By law, the commissioners had to reflect the socioeconomic, geographic and racial composition of Dallas ISD. Eight of the 15 members are current DISD parents. Four commissioners are DISD teachers. And there are some familiar names in the group.

Trustee Lew Blackburn selected his son, Lew Blackburn, Jr., for a spot. Carla Ranger, who retired from the board last month, picked her husband, D. Marcus Ranger. Board member Mike Morath appointed former trustee Edwin Flores, who is a home-rule proponent. And trustee Bernadette Nutall chose Shirley Ison-Newsome, a polarizing former DISD administrator who spent 37 years in the district.

Support Our Public Schools wants the commission to move quickly in drafting a home-rule charter so it could be on the November ballot for voter consideration. The deadline to get on the ballot is Aug. 18. Home-rule supporters now acknowledge it is an unlikely goal. The 1995 law allows the commission to operate for a year to craft a charter.

Dallas ISD school board candidate Joyce Foreman roundly defeated Bertha Bailey Whatley on Saturday to win the District 6 race. Foreman took a commanding lead in the early voting and extended her lead throughout Saturday.

Jerome Oberlton was sentenced this week to three years and five months in federal prison for bribery.

Former Dallas ISD chief of staff Jerome Oberlton was sentenced Thursday to three years and five months in federal prison for taking bribes when he worked in Atlanta Public Schools, The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreports.

When Oberlton was the chief technology officer in Atlanta schools, he accepted $60,000 in bribes in exchange for steering a $735,000 technology contract to a Michigan company. Oberlton resigned from Dallas ISD a year ago this week after he learned he was going to be indicted.

Oberlton initially pleaded not guilty to the charges but changed his plea several months ago. His co-defendant, Mahendra Patel, who was Oberlton’s neighbor in an Atlanta suburb, pleaded guilty last year.

“Oberlton lined his own pockets at the expense of the APS students and teachers who depended on him,” United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in a written statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “In a time when schools struggle to make the most of every dollar, Oberlton put his own greed before his obligation to protect scarce resources.”

Superintendent Mike Miles hired Oberlton to be his second-in-command in early 2013. Oberlton came from the Baltimore school district, where he was criticized for spending $250,000 to spruce up his executive suite. He also reimbursed the Baltimore district $5,000 after his department made questionable purchases at several stores, including Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Former State Rep. Harryette Ehrhardt, who is a member of home-rule opposition group Our Community, Our Schools, urged Dallas ISD trustees to take their time naming a commission to draft a charter for DISD.

Dallas ISD announced this afternoon it has verified the required number of signatures on the home-rule charter petition to now compel the trustees to create a commission that could overhaul the district.

The school district spent five days and brought in 50 temporary workers to review the petition from Support Our Public Schools, which was turned in last Thursday with about 48,000 signatures. By law, Support Our Public Schools needed to collect signatures from 24,650 registered voters in DISD for the home-rule initiative to advance.

More than 21,000 signatures could not be verified or were disqualified because the names appeared more than once or the people didn’t reside within Dallas ISD’s boundaries. Of those 21,000 signatures, 11,431 were from people not registered to vote.

Dallas ISD teamed up with Dallas County Elections Department to verify the petition signatures and used software that scans the pages and compares them to a database of registered voters.

Trustees will meet at 5:15 p.m. Thursday to receive the verified petition and hear 10-minute presentations from Support Our Public Schools and the largest opposition group, Our Community, Our Schools. Once the board receives the verified petition, Texas law states that trustees have 30 days to appoint a commission to draft a charter. In another meeting scheduled Thursday night, trustees will outline the process for appointing that 15-member commission.

“The board is committed to selecting a commission that will seriously consider all of the issues related to creating a home-rule charter,” board president Eric Cowan said in a statement. “Tonight, we will listen to representatives of the group that circulated the petition as well as a group of citizens that is opposed to creating a new charter.”

Support Our Public Schools has led the home-rule charter initiative to take advantage of a 1995 Texas law. It allows for school districts to transform in home rules, which would be free from state laws and could install a new system of governing.

Home rules would still follow federal laws and the state-mandated bilingual and special education programs.

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles talks at Dallas City Hall on Wednesday.

Superintendent Mike Miles began the school year as the subject of an investigation that could have cost him his job. Now, as opponents of a home-rule initiative rally behind Miles, his support in the public and among elected officials has seen a remarkable turnaround.

It was on full display Wednesday at a meeting between some Dallas ISD school board members and the Dallas City Council. Again and again, City Council members proclaimed support for Miles and his vision for the school district.

“The right choice right now is the man in the seat right here,” Carolyn Davis said, pointing at Miles in the first row of City Council chambers. “Mr. Miles, you have my 100 percent.”

Davis’ statement stands in stark contrast to her actions a year ago, when she led a raucous community meeting at Madison High School to protest Miles’ plan to remove the principal there. That meeting kicked off a contentious several months for Miles, who then became a target of an investigation in June. Community members called for him to be fired or resign. Some trustees suggested that he should lose his job.

In the past month and a half, Miles has found renewed support as the group Support Our Public Schools has made the case for converting DISD into a home-rule district. Opponents of home rule, including people who previously wanted Miles to leave, now cite the superintendent’s district improvement plans as reason not to interfere with DISD.

Mayor Mike Rawlings picked up on that change of heart Wednesday.

“I could get a unanimous vote for Mr. Miles today. I want you to know that nine months ago, that wasn’t the case. I’m very, very happy to see that,” he said.

Former Dallas ISD trustees Jack Lowe and Edwin Flores came out Tuesday night with four possible changes to the district under home rule. One change would impact the school year, while the other three would affect the school board and governance structure.

The former trustees are the first people to come forward with concrete suggestions for Dallas ISD if it turns into a home-rule charter district.

“These changes will increase citizen input, improve trustee selection, transparency, accountability for student outcomes and increase the diversity of a school board to capture the broad talents of our city,” they wrote in an op-ed in Wednesday’s The Dallas Morning News.

Their suggestions are:

Move the first day of the school year to earlier in August.

Move school board elections to Novembers in even years.

Force trustees to run again if student achievement in their districts don’t improve.

Make the nine-member school board made up of six elected officials from single-member districts and three appointed trustees, who would be nominated by parents.

Dallas ISD trustees Mike Morath and Bernadette Nutall were two panelists at a meeting Monday night about the future of Dallas ISD and home rule. Morath spoke first and criticized the DISD trustees for spending too little time discussing student achievement and too much time arguing about adult problems.

Morath said that the only people he finds that adamantly support the school board are trustees themselves.

“We argue amongst ourselves incessantly. We do a horrendously bad job. I just know that nine of us aren’t doing the jobs for our kids,” Morath said at the Salem Institutional Baptist Church.

Audience members cut Morath off at one point, interrupting him in mid-sentence. He was allowed to finish.

Nutall, who wasn’t scheduled to speak at the meeting, got up immediately after he finished and criticized him. Nutall said that home rule is all about “adult issues,” and that Morath didn’t inform or collaborate with the other eight trustees on the home-rule initiative before it launched.

She also pointed out that Morath, who has advocated to make school board elections more competitive under home rule, put on his website that he is the only DISD trustee to run unopposed. (I cannot find that on his website today.)

The Dallas school board has a called meeting at 8 p.m. Thursday to discuss the creation of a letter of reprimand and a 90-day growth plan for Superintendent Mike Miles. Trustees will hold the discussion in closed session.

The board decided on Sept. 30 to take the disciplinary action against Miles, who an investigation found had violated district policy and his contract. Trustees also made some changes to his contract, including elimination of a clause that allowed for a one-year extension if he receives a performance evaluation of “proficient.”

Miles also is now required to timely inform trustees at a board meeting of any hiring, assignment, reassignment, transfer or termination of senior staff members before the action takes place. This change was enacted in part to address the high turnover of chiefs in Miles’ cabinet – seven members gone in his first 11 months.

Also, the growth plan could encompass part of Miles’ first evaluation, which he also received on Sept. 30.

Trustees hired former U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins to lead the investigation. He was brought in after Miles was suspected of interfering with an internal investigation into the handling of a contract for parent education services.

Coggins' report cleared Miles of wrongdoing in the initial complaint. But it found he violated a district policy by talking to witnesses during the internal investigation.

The report also found that he helped a former administrator draft a resignation letter, which criticized the board of trustees but praised the superintendent's leadership. Miles may have helped leak the final resignation letter to the media, according to the report.

Prior to the called meeting, trustees will hold board briefings starting at 4 p.m.